CRN: IBM´s Collaboration Chief Talks Domino, Workplace Game Plan

A very long interview with LotusGM Mike Rhodin. If you've been wondering what Mike has been up toin his first few months leading Lotus, this interview reveals a lot. Hetalks about everything from ND7 adoption, competition, Workplace adoption,branding, developer opportunities, Linux, and more. A few examples:"I'mcomfortable with the progress we've made with Workplace... You'll see usposition the open standards-based, components-based composition model stuffas the front end to the SOA architecture IBM's bringing to the market.That will start to clarify things for people because it's where interactionand collaboration services meet business process through the SOA framework.When we started talking about Workplace being collaboration in the contextof business process, people thought we'd start to implement business processthings in workplace, and weren't' thinking about it as the front end tothe business process stuff we're doing in another part of Software Group"...Rhodin: Since the day I got toLotus, when I headed up the engineering teams, I made a promise to customersthat I was not going to create a cliff that they had to jump off to getto the next thing. I was going to provide a smooth path forward and guaranteeapplications moving forward and I believe I've delivered on that promiseCRN : So if you were talkingto a traditional Notes/Domino ISV, say Percussion, what do you tell themto do going forward? Stick with Domino? Rhodin: What you'll see unveiledat Lotusphere and in the coming year is how these things will start toconverge. We've been really working hard with our customers to understandwhat seamless evolution means to you. And what we get back is it's choiceand flexibility about when I do what. No forced dates or forced migrations.If your skills are in Domino applications, we'll carry those skills forwardand those assets forward. Scripting will continue to work. New releasesof Domino coming out. ...If people want to keep their skills on DominoDesigner building new apps, we're actually seeing more people buildingthis year than last the previous year people are more comfortable withthe longevity of the platform and no one's come up with a better solutionfor building apps faster than Domino Designer. In order to bridge the skills gap forthose moving toward J2EE technologies, we came out with Workplace Designer,which brought the skills of the Domino developer to a new tool that wouldbe familiar in a couple of hours to build apps except what gets generatedout of the bottom is J2EE components that fit into it without ever havingto write any Java code. CRN : Given the continued confusionaround Workplace/Domino, will you pull back on the Workplace messagingat all? Rhodin: We're going to continueto try to clarify it. The key thing is we believe the whole composite appmodel around workplace is fundamental to how SOAs are going to be builtin the future. What we've focused on all along is positioning he portaland workplace stuff as the interaction surfaces for SOA. That's alwaysbeen the design point Various analysts have written some prettynutty stuff. I can't believe we were in the same meetings. They keep tryingto spin it back into "This is just a new definition of e-mail, newdefinition of instant messaging." My point is, no. Those things becomeservices. They're commodities. No matter how you look at them, it's whatyou do with them that becomes interesting. And making those componentsavailable as part of this composite application model versus a separatee-mail system or separate IM system is what makes it interesting Just as when Notes came out 15 yearsago, no one knew what groupware or collaboration was. It was the firstset of applications that were built that started to show people the way.We're heading into that phase. Link: CRN:IBM's Collaboration Chief Talks Domino, Workplace Game Plan>

A very long interview with Lotus
GM Mike Rhodin. If you've been wondering what Mike has been up to
in his first few months leading Lotus, this interview reveals a lot. He
talks about everything from ND7 adoption, competition, Workplace adoption,
branding, developer opportunities, Linux, and more. A few examples:

"I'm
comfortable with the progress we've made with Workplace... You'll see us
position the open standards-based, components-based composition model stuff
as the front end to the SOA architecture IBM's bringing to the market.
That will start to clarify things for people because it's where interaction
and collaboration services meet business process through the SOA framework.
When we started talking about Workplace being collaboration in the context
of business process, people thought we'd start to implement business process
things in workplace, and weren't' thinking about it as the front end to
the business process stuff we're doing in another part of Software Group"
...

Rhodin: Since the day I got to
Lotus, when I headed up the engineering teams, I made a promise to customers
that I was not going to create a cliff that they had to jump off to get
to the next thing. I was going to provide a smooth path forward and guarantee
applications moving forward and I believe I've delivered on that promise
CRN : So if you were talking
to a traditional Notes/Domino ISV, say Percussion, what do you tell them
to do going forward? Stick with Domino?
Rhodin: What you'll see unveiled
at Lotusphere and in the coming year is how these things will start to
converge. We've been really working hard with our customers to understand
what seamless evolution means to you. And what we get back is it's choice
and flexibility about when I do what. No forced dates or forced migrations.
If your skills are in Domino applications, we'll carry those skills forward
and those assets forward. Scripting will continue to work. New releases
of Domino coming out. ...If people want to keep their skills on Domino
Designer building new apps, we're actually seeing more people building
this year than last the previous year people are more comfortable with
the longevity of the platform and no one's come up with a better solution
for building apps faster than Domino Designer.
In order to bridge the skills gap for
those moving toward J2EE technologies, we came out with Workplace Designer,
which brought the skills of the Domino developer to a new tool that would
be familiar in a couple of hours to build apps except what gets generated
out of the bottom is J2EE components that fit into it without ever having
to write any Java code.

CRN : Given the continued confusion
around Workplace/Domino, will you pull back on the Workplace messaging
at all?
Rhodin: We're going to continue
to try to clarify it. The key thing is we believe the whole composite app
model around workplace is fundamental to how SOAs are going to be built
in the future. What we've focused on all along is positioning he portal
and workplace stuff as the interaction surfaces for SOA. That's always
been the design point
Various analysts have written some pretty
nutty stuff. I can't believe we were in the same meetings. They keep trying
to spin it back into "This is just a new definition of e-mail, new
definition of instant messaging."
My point is, no. Those things become
services. They're commodities. No matter how you look at them, it's what
you do with them that becomes interesting. And making those components
available as part of this composite application model versus a separate
e-mail system or separate IM system is what makes it interesting
Just as when Notes came out 15 years
ago, no one knew what groupware or collaboration was. It was the first
set of applications that were built that started to show people the way.
We're heading into that phase.

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